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Viva Piñata
The "Viva Piñata" gameplay experience presents a customizable, social and spontaneous world in which gamers play an absolutely crucial role. The "Viva Piñata" world is an evolving paradise teeming with fantastic living piñata creatures and vibrant plant life, all determined by the player's choices and actions. "Viva Piñata" boasts the following qualities: * Customizable. "Viva Piñata" allows players' imaginations to run wild by providing them with expansive freedom and choice: ** Your world. Your choice of contents will determine which of the piñata species are attracted to your world, since they all have individual requirements. Sowing grass, digging ponds, planting flowers and growing trees all affect which of the unique piñatas you will see. It's not just about plants, either; there is a whole range of ornaments and structures that could be decisive. Your reward for creating an appealing paradise is to watch the piñatas visit and eventually reside there, which is where the fun really starts. ** Your piñatas. Once you have resident piñatas, you can begin to personalize your loyal community. Piñatas can be individually named and given their own personally designed tag to put on display as a declaration of their home turf. And the customization doesn't end there. You can make the colorful critters more distinctive by customizing them with all kinds of costumes and accessories. * Social. The "Viva Piñata" community is a rewarding place to be, whether you remain within the boundaries of your own world or venture out into the real world or your friend's piñata world via Xbox Live, the first and only global, unified online console games service. ** Interact with the piñatas. Getting to know and understand the personalities and requirements of your piñatas is essential if you want them to stay happy and thrive. Make your world their ideal paradise, and they'll want to raise a family and expand your community. ** Interact with the characters. Players decide how much help they want from the local guides, shopkeepers and work force. Go it alone or get them involved - you choose. ** Interact with other players online. Via the Xbox Live and Windows Live online community, players can contact other gamers to lend a hand, lay down a competitive challenge or trade items. * Spontaneous. "Viva Piñata" is a constantly changing world where anything can and does happen: ** It's happening outside. It's not just new piñata species that are drawn to your world; untamed sour piñatas with bad attitudes and troublemaking ruffians do their worst to spoil your creation and must be dealt with. ** It's happening inside. Maintaining harmony within a growing community isn't always easy when rivalries, illness, injuries and even candy-spilling fights occur. If players turn their backs, who knows what their piñatas will do? Development Rare co-founder Tim Stamper conceptualized a gardening game for the handheld Pocket PC platform around 2002. A small (three-person) team began work on a simple prototype while the Rare was still affiliated with Nintendo, prior to its Microsoft acquisition. The game's development transferred to the original Xbox and, ultimately, to the Xbox 360 for its graphics capabilities. Rare wanted its animals to have a unified style, which was how the game's concept artist arrived at the piñata concept. The idea was exciting to Rare, as piñatas were not commonplace in England. The connection between piñatas and candy-filled insides led to new gameplay directions. The Viva Piñata team was a model for productivity and regular output within Rare and Microsoft Studios. Though compared to the 12-person teams behind earlier Rare games, the company's Xbox 360 development teams consisted of 50 to 60 people. The Viva Piñata team included about 50 people at its zenith. Microsoft also transitioned its development teams to use the company's XNA package to streamline and reduce duplication in engineering efforts. Microsoft pressured the Viva Piñata development team to keep the game's themes kid-friendly, as the parent company planned for the game and resulting franchise to increase the market appeal of their Xbox 360. In 2006, a Microsoft Games executive called the game its most important franchise. But its reception was tepid. As Rare released the original Viva Piñata for the Xbox 360 in 2006, its development team saw it as incomplete. The developers had cut partial ideas from the release in order to meet their deadlines. Rare's Gregg Mayles said that the game sold well and steadily on par with their expectations and Xbox's Phil Spencer added that the game was considered a success inside the company. The team incorporated player feedback and worked towards a "more definitive version" of the original. Mayles left the team to work on Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and Justin Cook became the team's lead designer. The sequel was built atop the original and the developers re-used many of the tools from the original game's development. In both the sequel and the original, the development team volunteered to record the sounds used for the piñatas. One of the team's new ideas was "Piñata Vision", a feature that detects printed cards via the Xbox camera to change the in-game environment (e.g, adding piñatas or altering the weather). Near the time of the sequel's release, Rare's Mayles figured that the team would likely not have enough new gameplay ideas to warrant a sequel to Trouble in Paradise, though Cook said that he would work on the game's shop interface had he more time. The games were later re-released on the 2015 compilation of Rare games, Rare Replay, but the server that handled their piñata sharing features had been shut down by that time. In-between the two series releases, Rare released Viva Piñata: Party Animals. In early 2007, a Microsoft Games executive had expressed interest in continuing the series onto the Nintendo DS platform. Rare had attempted to make Trouble in Paradise's camera features work with Pocket Paradise, but chose instead to release the games on time. Category:Viva Piñata (Series)